Edison, though materialist-minded, was yet willing to accept spiritual beliefs if they could be proven by scientific tests. Here is described one of his amazing secret experiments whereby he sought to lure spirits from beyond the grave and trap them with super-sensitive instruments.

ONE black, howling wintry night in 1920 â€”just such a night when superstitious people would bar their doors and windows against marauding ghostsâ€”Thomas Edison, the famous inventive wizard, gathered a small group of scientists in his laboratory to witness his secret attempts to lure spirits from beyond the grave and trap them with instruments of incredible sensitivity.

Offers of Millions, Offers of Marriage and 14,000 Gifts in Packages Sent to Atlantic Flyer

By FITZHUGH GREEN

THROUGH the crowded events that followed the great flight to Paris, the author of this article was one of Col. Lindbergh’s chief aides. And in the swift preparation of Lindbergh’s book “We,” he wrote several chapters describing the welcoming receptions which the modest aviator did not wish to write himself. Commander Green also aided in handling Lindbergh’s huge mail.

“Dear Lindyâ€””

Those two words, with variations, have been written more than three and a half million times in the last four months by people of all races, colors and climes.

Entertaining article that explains why the core of any military force will always be made up of men and horses.“Machines of war can only be adjuncts to their superior flexibility.”

Do we still have any mounted cavalry? I’ve seen pictures of those Special Forces guys in Afghanistan, but that’s about it.

Why Modern Armies Still Cling to the Cavalry

by M. W. MEIER

The tank is a powerful weapon, but the faithful horse can still outfight it in many situations encountered on modern battlefields.
Here is told the cavalry’s side of the story.

YOU may not know it but Uncle Sam has the finest cavalry on earthâ€”pitifully small though it is.

It may lack the swank, color and picturesqueness of that of other nations but what it may lack in fancy-drilling ability it more than makes up for in equipment, firing-power and maneuverabilityâ€”the things that really count in war.

THE nine most interesting places in the world? I should not dare to try to name them. But I can give you a list of those which to me have seemed to offer more of interest than any other nine that I have known. Firstâ€”The Grand Canyon of Arizona. Why? Because I love beauty and it is the biggest beautiful thing in the world. It is unique because the earth can show nothing to equal it in beauty, gorgeous-ness of color, grandeur, impressive weirdness and immensity.

This article sounds like it could have been written today, except the authors seem more accepting of evolution.

The Conflict Between Science and Religion

A Discussion by Leaders in American Life, with an Introduction By BRUCE BARTON

Author of “The Man Nobody Knows” and “The Book Nobody Knows”

THE printing of these statements is a public service. It ought to bring us closer to the day when the absurd phrase “the conflict between science and religion” will be permanently in the discard.

When theologians presume to prescribe the boundaries of truth they put themselves in the impossible position of most of their predecessors through the Middle Ages. When scientists presume to announce that man is merely material, coming from nothing and bound nowhere, and that the universe is a meaningless riddle, they are equally out of their depth.

THE TRANSISTOR’S 20th ANNIVERSARY:
How Germanium and a Bit of Wire Changed the World

The nuts and bolts of modern electronics, transistors lie at the heart of our rockets, computers, radar, radio, TV, and a thousand other devices

By W. STEVENSON BACON

The time: December, 1947. The place: Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, N.J. The event: the invention of a new kind of electronic “valve” that can amplify signalsâ€”an invention so basic that it will virtually remold all science and technology.

Unlike the vacuum tube, it will not need a power-consuming hot filament, nor will it require a vacuum. Is it an impractical dream? Many skeptics think so.

After years of experimenting, Bell scientists, faced with repeated failures, have turned back to basic research.

Grandpa of Electronic Computers Built 125 Years Ago
TODAY’S GENIACs and MANIACs might be called babbages if an Englishman named Charles Babbage hadn’t had money problems.

Babbage, who lived in the mid-1800s, conceived of mechanical “brains” which would perform calculations ambitious even for today’s gigantic electronic computers (Fig. 1).

His Difference Engine (Fig. 2) was built between 1823 and 1842, when the British government withdrew its financial support. His Analytical Engine was still more ambitious but never amounted to more than 239 detailed drawings. It would have had a storage capacity of 1,000 50-digit numbers and built-in logarithms and other tables.

This is the first of a series of articles on the romance of synthetic chemistry in which science has solved the mystery for turning waste into wealth.

“Don’t throw that away!” This is the battle cry of the great synthetic chemical industry which makes everything from hair-brush handles to T.N.T. from stuff that was once just waste. If you want to buy some perfume, the odds are that the bottle will contain odors extracted from coal tar, once a nightmare to factories who paid people to get rid of it.

But today, whether it’s waste gas, tar, or peanut shells, the chemists want it to sell back to you again in the form of motor fuel, photographic film, or pipe stems. What men do with rubbish would turn the most efficient housewife green with envy and the whole thing only started late last century.

WHEN you march through the main gate of the Naval Training Station at San Diego, Calif., as a raw recruit you leave the land behind. You will spend two months learning to be a sailor before you are assigned to the battle fleet but even though you are still on dry land, things are a lot like they are at sea.

In a couple of days you will know that a floor is really a deck and you’ll not make the mistake of calling a bulkhead a wall. You will ask whether the smoking lamp is lit instead of whether you may smoke and you will be telling time by ship’s bells instead of by hours.

Black gold, precious underground liquid, is food for the modern war machine. Deprived of it, a nation’s military campaign is threatened with failure. Will oil become an instrument to enforce peace or to cause war?

WITHIN the last few decades, oil has changed from an almost unknown and unnecessary commodity to one of the world’s most vitally needed materials. Oil, unlike nitroglycerin, has always been an innocent, viscous fluid used for lubrication and fuel. But harmless petroleum, like Dr. Jekyll, has undergone a startling transformation. Oil may yet be the means whereby the flaming torch of war is carried across the world.